We can do the entire setup with the trial BIBM as it is fully functional. After 30 days you start to get Warnings. Activating with a registered CD is all you need to do to become registered. One click and you are registered. No further setup.

Right from the start I have always partitioned my drives before installing the OSs... except for W7... the first time I let it do it's own thing... didn't like what I saw - found out it could be installed into one partition and from then on, have put it into one.

So, just to establish the base line for the install--you let Win7 do its own thing initially--installing into *unallocated* space, and it must have installed the SRP and the OS partitions, yes?

When you didn't like the results, you then deleted that installation, pre-partitioned the HDD so you could *force* the Win7 to install into a single partition without the presence of the SRP--correct?

Once you have that taken care of, given that your installation is to a single partition and there is no SRP, the Win7 boot file (the BCD--*boot configuration data* file) should be found on the C: drive in the directory *boot*--so this path: C:\boot\bcd. Is it there?

Unlike WinXP which uses *boot.ini* (which is a text file), the BCD file is in computer code and not a text file. So you can not simply open that file with a text editor and make changes. One has to use some sort of BCD utility to access the data and make any modifications. And even with a utility, it's sometimes hard to figure out what's what with the BCD--the various options are often cryptic at best--not intuitive.

I'm going to stop here, let you answer the questions above, and then we can continue.

Unlike WinXP which uses *boot.ini* (which is a text file), the BCD file is in computer code and not a text file. So you can not simply open that file with a text editor and make changes. One has to use some sort of BCD utility to access the data and make any modifications. And even with a utility, it's sometimes hard to figure out what's what with the BCD--the various options are often cryptic at best--not intuitive.

You mean I'm gonna have to shell out money after all for some ap that can read the gobbledegook in that file???? (I'm not NAMING that ap... that's in another thread now)

Did you try to restore an image of your Win7 and it would not boot? Did you do a *whole disk* restore from an image, or were you doing a *partition* from image restore? Or ....?

I messed around with a trial w7 from M$ back when they were building this OS, and...

I really can't remember what happened... I have this faint thought that there was trouble doing this... but what exactly happened... a blank...

Can't remember if the re-image was back to the same drive/partition; or another drive/partition...So I need to try it both ways now so I'll know...

however...

I'm not comfortable with making a 2003 image of my w7pro and then re-imaging back to the exact same partition right now... don't want to mess up what's already there that needs "fixing"...(nothing more boring to me than to keep installing the same OS over and over again)

I can re-image it to my other 2.5 hdd that's empty... and we all know that won't work, cuz it has another ID... right??

So... how do we do this...?

can I re-image it back to the same drive it came from... but to the extended logical instead?? will that give the same result as re-imaging to the partition it came from - that I don't want to mess up??

You mean I'm gonna have to shell out money after all for some ap that can read the gobbledegook in that file????

No, not a single dime! Win7 has it's own command line editor--one has to use it sort of *on faith* because it doesn't give you a nice GUI with lots of bells and whistles that lets you explore the different settings, etc.

Yes, BIBM has a BCD editor that is quite nice to use--that alone could be worth the price of admission. And if you do a Goggle search on BCD Editor or BCD Utility, you find a number of other *free* choice on the web. I have only used the BIBM and Windows BCDEdit utility that's built into Win7. The others I am not personally familiar with.

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I'm not comfortable with making a 2003 image of my w7pro and then re-imaging back to the exact same partition right now... don't want to mess up what's already there that needs "fixing"...

(nothing more boring to me than to keep installing the same OS over and over again)

That's why we have Ghost !

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I can re-image it to my other 2.5 hdd that's empty... and we all know that won't work, cuz it has another ID... right??

That's the *best* way to proceed--test it on a spare HDD and make sure you're comfortable with the steps involved and the results are as expected and predictable before you try it on your *production* system.

Have you made your Win7 backup image to the external USB HDD? I presume it is a *whole disk* image, and not just the OS partition? The answer determines what step(s) to take.

My CD starts the ghost program automatically... all I have to do is click yes/no on the first screen... and then I'm in...

So I'm finally getting back to how to use Ghost 2003 with Win7 issues.....

When your CD boots to Ghost and automatically loads Ghost for you--you will not have any switches in place. But it's easy to set it up. Just *Quit* Ghost. You should be back at the A:\ prompt. Type

Code:

ghost.exe /fdsp

or

ghost.exe -fdsp

and press enter and now the switch's action will be in force until you quit Ghost and re-load it or re-boot in the future.

Now, your Win7 image is not *generalized* yet, so the disk signature determines if Win7 will boot or not without doing a *repair*. But, if the *-fdsp* switch is active, then when you restore the Win7 image to a new HDD, Ghost will edit the disk signature as part of the restore so is will be the same as the disk signature from the other HDD from witch the image was taken.

There could be other variables that might cause some type of behavior that is unexpected. But, as long as we are using a *spare* HDD that will not cause any problem if things don't work out, we can recover, reset things as needed, and try again. I think it's worth the trial to determine if there are any *gotcha's*.

Once you know you can create a Win7 image and successfully restore it to the test HDD, then we can more confidently start editing the Win7 BCD knowing that we can recover using a Ghost backup if we need to.

I see Brian has answered that specific question about how to *generalize* the BCD.

So, it's a chicken/egg question--do you want to determine if the -fdsp switch works so you know you can restore a backup image if something goes wrong with the steps involved in *generalizing* the BCD, or do you want to *generalize* the BCD and then do Ghost backups and restores without using the -fdsp switch to test. Either way, you will need to test Ghost without the -fdsp switch to confirm it's working without a hitch.

If the BCD gets messed up, or if Win7 will not boot after a restore, there is a easy, quick fix if you have your Win7 installation CD handy.

Just for the record, I've done the BCD edits on three different systems without any problems, and Ghost 2003 works fine with image creation and restores. Personally, I've never had any problems with doing the BCD edits.

But, Brian has done it more times than anybody can probably count--so he really knows what he's talking about!

nope, will do just the OS partition... the extended logical is empty...

If the extended is empty, it won't take up too much space or time to include it. When you restore the whole drive, you will see that it re-creates the same structure as the original--if all goes well .

If you're testing the -fdsp switch, then I would recommend doing a *whole drive* image creation (being that you have not already created the test image), and a *whole drive* restore to the spare HDD.

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well, the first prompt is actually a:\ghost.exe (I think)...

You can just type *space* and then -fdsp after the a:\ghost.exe if that is what's already there.

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Is that when I do the image to the external hdd... or when I do the re-image to the other drive??

My initial instructions was assuming you already had the Win7 image backup. I recommend using the -fdsp switch for both image creation and restore--I'm pretty sure you only really need to use it on the restore, however.

Of course, you have to shut down after creating the image of the source HDD. Then switch out the source HDD, and put the spare HDD in place. When you re-boot to Ghost, you then need to shut Ghost down and restart it with the -fdsp switch.